[flatts1b]

In the "A MUST READ ON FLUKE FROM UNITED BOATMANS" thread, the following excerpt caught my attention.

Emphasis addded by myself...

sealaw wrote:
EC NEWELL MAN wrote:

presumably based on state's previous lack of success in meeting the allocation.

Would that be the same thing as saying: PAYBACK?

EC NEWELL MAN<>

No...actually it's really an adjustment to next year's regs based on previous "performance" to assure that we don't go over again this year. Paybacks cannot work in a "soft" quota system, because we don't really know for sure how much we went over (or if we really went over at all!)

Sealaw,

Each time this topic comes up, it seems that if you ask 5 different folks, then you'll get 5 different answers.

For example, I have seen it argued that there are already paybacks in the recreational fisheries. As the argument goes, if we exceed our quota in one year then fishery managers require us to payback the overage in the form of reducing the following year's catch limits?

Is that just semantics or is this argument truly not a payback?

Thanks,
Mike F.

 

[guest]

I think the way it works is that if you are over your quota in one year you make your regs more conservative the next year to account for that. But that it doesn?t carry over into the following year.

So if a state is over its rec ?quota? in a year under this scheme they set next years target at that years quota minus 20%, hoping that they come in on target. If they are over the following year by 10% then the next year they do the same thing, set regs that would only be more conservative by 10%

In a payback system it would carry over, so if they were over 20% in one year and 10% the following year, they would have to set the regs to 30% less the 3rd year?and so on. Eventually, if they kept at it they would end up with a quota of zero, or effectively so, and have to shut it down completely.

Right?

 

[MakoMike]

Mike, I can see hoiw it would be confusing, esepcially these days when the allowable quota is also being reduced every year. But no there are no "paybacks" in the current system. Maybe an expample is the clearest way to demonstrate what does happen vs what would happen if we had paybacks. Lets assume that state X's quota for given species is 100. State X sets its regs with a target of keeping the catch to 100 pounds, but the regs are really too liberal and the state winds up catching 125. Assume that the next year the quota is still at 100. In year 2 the state will tighten the regs a litle again aiming to keep the catch to 100. Lets assume that in year 2 the actual catch (lets not get into how it is measured) is 110. In year 3 the state will tighten its regs just a little more to, once again, try to hit the target of 100.

Now in a payback system, at the end of year 1 the state has gone over its quota by 25. So even though its quota for year 2 would have been 100, now becuase they have to payback the 25 overage their actual target catch is only 75. So they have to set their regs to achieve a target catch of 75. If in year 2 they actual catch is 110, then the state will have to payback an overage of 35 in year three (actual catch of 110 vs target catch of 75) so they will have to tighten their regs again, this time to achieve a target catch of 65 ( 100 of "normal quota" less payback of 35).

So you can see that the target quota, which is what determines the regs, is much smaller in years 2 and 3 under a payback system than they would have been without a payback.

 

[WaterAye]

I see your point Mike, but whatever you call it the system stinks.

There are so many variables at work behind the scenes, it's like trying to hit a moving target while wearing a blindfold.

 

[flatts1b]

Spin?

MakoMike wrote:
Mike, I can see hoiw it would be confusing, esepcially these days when the allowable quota is also being reduced every year. But no there are no "paybacks" in the current system.

Thanks for that MakoMike. What you wrote here seems to make much sense and is in line with what Sealaw wrote. I know you both follow such matters a great deal.

One of the biggest challenges I have found when it comes to discussing fisheries management is the tremendous amount of misinformation out there. Some intentional and some not.

Consider the following excerpt from the Recreational Fishing Alliance's testimony to congress regarding recreational paybacks.

quote:

{Emphasis added - flatts1b}

Mr. James A. Donofrio

Executive Director

Recreational Fishing Alliance

Testimony

Before the Committee on Resources

United States House of Representatives

Hearing on the Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act

May 3, 2006

[SNIP]

There may be a perception among some that the recreational fishing sector is not currently required to ?pay-back? overages. This is inaccurate. If the recreational sector exceeds a specified annual catch limit, Councils and/or the Secretary already require ?pay-back? by reducing the future catch limits, shortening the length of seasons, increasing minimum size limits, and reducing bag limits. Under current law, fishery managers have a minimal ability to prevent this ?pay-back? from resulting in a total and immediate shut-down of entire fisheries. The proposed language in the Senate bill and others eliminates such capability and would result in immediate and long-term fisheries closures.

[SNIP]

Source:
http://republicans.resourcescommitt...archives/109/testimony/2006/jamesdonofrio.htm

Now MakoMike, who am I to believe here? You and Sealaw, or the RFA?

Again, I think that Sealaw and yourself are correct on this by any reasonable measure.

However, our friends at the RFA are also not spring chickens when it comes to taking positions on fishery matters. Right? But they are saying that you and I are wrong.

Might it be that the RFA was, shall we say, "disengenuous", when they gave their testimony to Congress. I mean, they are above that. Right?

Or were they simply just plain wrong, and they didn't know any better?

Thanks,
Mike F.

 

[MakoMike]

flatts1b wrote:
Might it be that the RFA was, shall we say, "disengenuous", when they gave their testimony to Congress. I mean, they are above that. Right?

Or were they simply just plain wrong, and they didn't know any better?

Thanks,
Mike F.

Mike,
I think that using the term "disengenuous" is being kind. I think that were just being good advocates, even if hat meant being slighly misleading. Many lobbying groups do the same thing, its kind of common prectice. They certainly know what paybacks are.

 

[partyboatangler]

Flatts1,

I am not going to speak for Mr. Donofrio as I have no contact with the gentleman. But I am familiar with the overall subject matter.

My ?GUESS? would be he was basing his remarks on the National Marine Fisheries Services? comments made in the following public document.

2003 SF, S & BSB Rec Specifications Enviromental Assessment, Regulator Impact Review and Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis dated: March 26, 2003

Page 49, 2nd para.

?... In the recreational fisheries, overages in one year may result in lower bag limits, larger minimum size limits, and/or shorter seasons than would otherwise have been allowed, had the overages not occurred. Increased harvests in one year are thus ?paid back? by decreased harvest opportunities for the next year. ...? Emphasis added

Can you please keep your public discussion, which allegedly was started to try to better understand a particular subject matter, free of unwarranted comments, either unintentionally or intentionally meant to discredit a certain person or organization?

I understand your point of distinction exactly Flatts1, but if you have a problem with this as ?spin? take it up with the NMFS legal department.

This post edited by partyboatangler 11:39 AM 02/20/2008

 

[flatts1b]

"True Paybacks"

PBA, congratulations on becoming Noreast's newest moderator??

I thought that this forum encouraged discussion on such matters.

Anyway...

Considering that you have been very outspoken against recreational paybacks, would you consider Mr. Donofrio's assumptions about them to be truly paybacks in sense that most fishery managers refer to them when discussing the pros and cons of them.

In other words, do you agree or disagree with the RFA that recreational fishermen already have paybacks?

I value your opinion on this as I'm just trying to make sense of the payback issue amid all of the "perceptions" out there. I'm leaning toward Sealaw's and MakoMike's view on this. But I could be pursuaded otherwise.

Questions are a good thing, PBA. And maybe if more folks asked more questions, then they wouldn't find themselves rallying to support positions of which they have no clue what its impacts will be on the fishermen that they claim they want to help.

Thanks,
Mike F.

P.S.

Guest, do I infer correctly that your take on this is similar to MakoMike's and Sealaw's?

 

[loligo]

PBA- SEALAW MM- I'd like to hear JD's version of this.

Good question on the table here RFA1- whats up with the obviously intentional (I know you too well to think otherwise) verbiage of that testimony?

I know you are reading this Jim, or one of your folks has told you about it- whatever- how about an answer?

Jim?

 

[guest]

flatts1b wrote:


Guest, do I infer correctly that your take on this is similar to MakoMike's and Sealaw's?

I think so. It's sorta like "payback" in a sense that they are trying to get the bag/size/season limits to equal a certain number of dead fish. It took a lot of reading here to get the gist, because I once thought they were true "paybacks" for fish killed too. And I was corrected.

I think maybe managers in NY thought so too because they ended the season early.

One thing I think people need to remember is if the recs blow the "target" this year NMFS is going to shut things down for 2009. I hope the people, when they are commenting on the bag/size/season limits, understand that.

 

[WaterAye]

Guest wrote:
One thing I think people need to remember is if the recs blow the "target" this year NMFS is going to shut things down for 2009.

This may be exactly what is needed to force a change in the bad legislation which we are currently governed by. Hogarth has been replaced, now it is time for a new regional administrator in NERO.

A complete shut down of recreational fishing for fluke when the stock is at incredibly high levels of abundance will point a big spotlight at the bad legislation.

 

[MakoMike]

Maybe it would help to think of it this way, true paybacks would reduce the targets, the regs are just the means to achieve those targets.

 

[MakoMike]

WaterAye wrote:
Guest wrote:
One thing I think people need to remember is if the recs blow the "target" this year NMFS is going to shut things down for 2009.

This may be exactly what is needed to force a change in the bad legislation which we are currently governed by. Hogarth has been replaced, now it is time for a new regional administrator in NERO.

A complete shut down of recreational fishing for fluke when the stock is at incredibly high levels of abundance will point a big spotlight at the bad legislation.



Hogarth and Kirkul are just following their maching orders set out in the MSA, they really have no choice in the matter. If fluke fishing gets shut down in 2009, 99% of the population won't even know about it, much less care about it.

This post edited by MakoMike 01:02 PM 02/20/2008

 

[loligo]

MakoMike wrote:
If fluke fishing gets shut down in 2009, 99% of the population will even know about it, much less care about it.

Mind you they are only talking about closing rec fluke....

 

[MakoMike]

loligo wrote:
MakoMike wrote:
If fluke fishing gets shut down in 2009, 99% of the population will even know about it, much less care about it.

Mind you they are only talking about closing rec fluke....

If the targets look like they are going to be missed they won't limit themselves to the recreational side of things, you can bet on that.

 

[guest]

MakoMike wrote:


Hogarth and Kirkul are just following their maching orders set out in the MSA, they really have no choice in the matter. If fluke fishing gets shut down in 2009, 99% of the population won't even know about it, much less care about it.

And while fluke is important to NJ and NY its not so important for the rest of the country. It would be a wake-up call to managers in the other parts of the country to set more conservative targets and to keep them in-side their quotas.

 

[loligo]

MakoMike wrote:
you can bet on that.

How much?

 

[CaptPaul]

Paybacks. It may be a bit more than simple, the recreational regulations, but most of the participants here are quite intelligent enought to understand the difference between paybacks and the current system of reguation. If you want to go after a person, then simply call them on their point.

Assume coastwide management for a moment. Assume the quoat fro the recreational sector is 1,000,000 fish. The regs are set at, say, six fish at eighteen inches, May 1 thru Sept 31. At the end of the year, it is decided, somehow, that the recreational harvest on the coast was 1,200,000 pieces. The following year, assuming that there are similar numbers in the biomass and there is no rebuilding schedule ticking, or that there has been a three-year fixed quota adopted, whatever, the managers decide that the stock can bear another 1,000,000 piece harvest. That year will still be alloted 1,000,000 pieces, not 800,000 pieces, which would be the case if there were paybacks. That's what paybacks are, correct? However, since the preceding years regulations did not come in on target, the following years regs will be adjusted, according to the previous years success, in this case to harvest twenty percent less. Not paybacks at all, it's simply an adjustment to fine tune the regulations to perform better. A very big difference.

Now, the managers in NY did indeed close the season early last year to avoid loosing quoat for this coming year. This is the terrific error perpetrated by a brand new Commissioner, an acting director of Marine Resources, and a poorly educated scientific staff advising them. Their collective stubborness to admit their error when it was pointed out to them resulted in only a two week extension, not their admission of complete error in action. If they weren't toop proud to admit error, the season would have remained open, and, in my opinion, NY would have gotten, at the very least, better regs by a haor this year.

Why, how, you ask? Of course, it is a reasonable question. Very simply, a years regs are based upon the success of the opreceding years regs. This takes into account the size limit, the bag limit, and the season. When a set of regs isn't successsful, the following year's regs are adjusted, by either of the three parameters, or a combination of them. By shutting down the season early, the DEC did not change anything for the better. the new regs were then to be based on the trunkated season- Not an open season, as we scheduled. So, this years regs were based on us harvesting a reported 666,000 pieces at four fish, 19 1/2", and a season from April 24 thru Sept 17. If the DEC had left the season open, the landigs per day would have crashed after Labor Day, as they did, and continued to diminish, both as people fished less as the year progressed, and as the weather prohibited more days at sea (the Fall was not good for weather). Therefore, I submit, if the season had been left to run, the landings per day would have dropped, and the regs for this year would not be extracted from the landings of the peak of the season. Think about it this way- If the season were only the month of October, and the landings were measured, as opposed to the season being only the month of Augustt, and the landings being measured, what would you come up w/ when you went to figure the length of the season the following year? Stepping back from the extreme, wouldn't it figure that it would help the following seasons regs if some days of low effort were allowed to come into the statistics?

Paul

 

[loligo]

It may be a bit more than simple---followed by 3 paragraphs.......not so simple? I can't even figure out what one word was Paul? "haor"???

CaptPaul wrote:
Paybacks. It may be a bit more than simple, the recreational regulations, but most of the participants here are quite intelligent enought to understand the difference between paybacks and the current system of regulation. If you want to go after a person, then simply call them on their point.

Assume coastwide management for a moment. Assume the quota from the recreational sector is 1,000,000 fish. The regs are set at, say, six fish at eighteen inches, May 1 thru Sept 31. At the end of the year, it is decided, somehow, that the recreational harvest on the coast was 1,200,000 pieces. The following year, assuming that there are similar numbers in the biomass and there is no rebuilding schedule ticking, or that there has been a three-year fixed quota adopted, whatever, the managers decide that the stock can bear another 1,000,000 piece harvest. That year will still be alloted 1,000,000 pieces, not 800,000 pieces, which would be the case if there were paybacks. That's what paybacks are, correct? However, since the preceding years regulations did not come in on target, the following years regs will be adjusted, according to the previous years success, in this case to harvest twenty percent less. Not paybacks at all, it's simply an adjustment to fine tune the regulations to perform better. A very big difference.

Now, the managers in NY did indeed close the season early last year to avoid loosing quota for this coming year. This is the terrific error perpetrated by a brand new Commissioner, an acting director of Marine Resources, and a poorly educated scientific staff advising them. Their collective stubborness to admit their error when it was pointed out to them resulted in only a two week extension, not their admission of complete error in action. If they weren't too proud to admit error, the season would have remained open, and, in my opinion, NY would have gotten, at the very least, better regs by a hair this year.

Why, how, you ask? Of course, it is a reasonable question. Very simply, a years regs are based upon the success of the opreceding years regs. This takes into account the size limit, the bag limit, and the season. When a set of regs isn't successsful, the following year's regs are adjusted, by either of the three parameters, or a combination of them. By shutting down the season early, the DEC did not change anything for the better. The new regs were then to be based on the trunkated season- Not an open season, as we scheduled. So, this years regs were based on us harvesting a reported 666,000 pieces at four fish, 19 1/2", and a season from April 24 thru Sept 17. If the DEC had left the season open, the landigs per day would have crashed after Labor Day, as they did, and continued to diminish, both as people fished less as the year progressed, and as the weather prohibited more days at sea (the Fall was not good for weather). Therefore, I submit, if the season had been left to run, the landings per day would have dropped, and the regs for this year would not be extracted from the landings of the peak of the season. Think about it this way- If the season were only the month of October, and the landings were measured, as opposed to the season being only the month of Augustt, and the landings being measured, what would you come up w/ when you went to figure the length of the season the following year? Stepping back from the extreme, wouldn't it figure that it would help the following seasons regs if some days of low effort were allowed to come into the statistics?

Paul

This post edited by CaptPaul 04:54 PM 02/20/2008

 

[CaptPaul]

Come On, John!

I can't beleive you made me read that drool I typed. You cold have highlighted the word for me.

Anyways, "Hoar" is "hair." To the best of my knowledge, there were no hoars involved in this process. I also mis spelled quota. I will go back and edit it for spelling and grammar.. I simply cannot type angry. Sorry.

Paul